Global Warming, not man made!

[farseerlum]

making a small difference will not help.

IT WON\"T

to comabt green house gasses you need to ACTIVELY reduce them. only carbon has any hope of being reduced through tree growth. and it won\'t be nearly enough.

what is really annoying is the whole you can do your bit crowd who are busy rearranging deckchairs on the titanic. and half of them are making matter worse. recycling paper, fitting catylitic converters and using ethanol are \"green\" things to do. unless you have a clue and realise what damage these things do.

 

[Torn blue sky]

Well I don\'t know if it actually occured to anyone...

We really don\'t help at all by pumping out all this pollution in the first place. Simple.
Another fact which seems to be overlooked; The earth has always been a healthy ecosystem till we started f**king with it. Do you think there would be as much Co2 if we didn\'t keep cutting down all those bloody trees?

And before you say \"well it\'s not that much\", take a look at the state of the rainforests for a start!
Some bright spark came up with the novel idea of justifying deforestistion by planting a sapling...bra-f***ing-vo! Did they take into account how long it\'s going to take for that sapling to grow into a decent sizes tree to REALLY help with the problem? Or maybe it was to soothe their moral dilema, which is probably more likely. :flame:

 

[farseerlum]

leaving the trees in the forests does not help with the carbon problem.

for carbon to removed from the sytem it has to be converted to wood essentially. new tree mass gets rid of carbon from the atmosphere. old tree mass has done it\'s job and doesn\'t help to remove carbon anymore.

 

[Talion]

I dont get all this negativity towards doing something..........you say turning off light bulbs doesn\'t help.

Well it must.........if me turning off my lights and plugs when not using them saves the smallest piece of energy then voila it\'s helped. Lot\'s of small things turn into big things.

Those of you who say it doesn\'t show me 100% proof that is doesn\'t.

As for man hasn\'t had much of an effect I dont believe that for a second, the earth has never had to deal with anything like industrial man before, to say we haven\'t affected in some way is ridiculous.

 

[Sand Rat]

Don\'t have a problem with doing something. Hell I live 1/4 of a mile from my job and walk to work daily. I turn off lights, and try to make the trips ones that are multiple in nature.

What I object to is guys like Al Gore telling me I have to cut back, while they fly private jets, and pay more each month in electric bills than I pay to rent and heat my apartment. All because they bought an \"Indulgence\" to allow themselves that luxury.

 

[supervike]

This is what i am truly frightened of. The \'powers\' that be have convinced us the problem is so huge and doom is coming. As many have said and alluded to, this has stopped becoming about science and hypothesis and all about \'undisputed fact\' and religous zealotry.

The media loves these stories. They make great headlines, gets peoples attention, brings in money, etc. etc.

Recycling paper and cutting out \'carbon footprint\' are good measures, but it WILL NOT BE ENOUGH for the zealotry. They will continually push for more and more radical ideas such as this:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060804-global-warming.html

This guy is so sure of his belief that he is willing to dump sulfur into our atmosphere to reflect solar radiation.

As we go along, I\'m really fearful that more and more radical ideas will become commonplace, and probably tried.

 

[Talion]

I agree those nut-jobs are nut jobs.

The way I see it is showing respect to our planet. I truely believe in \"mother earth\", \"mother nature\" , \"gai\".......what ever you want to call it.

I believe we are harming the world we live in, and Global warming is partlly caused by us, so any little thing we can do to help the planet............is all good.

 

[Sand Rat]

Actually, since most trees that are cut for paper are specifically grown for that purpose, recylcing paper does more damage to the environment than good - check the amount of water used to recycle one ton of paper.

There are solutions out there - yes, reducing my carbon footprint might help - course, now reducing it by using more electricity just shifts the footprint somewhere else.

 

[Talion]

I suppose we have to make up for the trees we cut down in the rainforest.

 

[Avelorn]

I think supervike takes up the best point of being sceptical. Because quite frankly those kind of ideas scare the heck out of me as well. While I believe we have a pretty firm grasp that we are fueling this global warming I don\'t believe we have the knowledge to start meddling with the atmosphere in this kind of way... there is no way to be sure what will happen.

@Steelcult: It\'s not like the error was a huge blow to the science or anything. You might find this article enlighting.

@Einion: Hm. Yes some are indeed sceptical, but the majority aren\'t. Neither of us are by merits capable of judging between them as science isn\'t really a democracy the couple of % of dissenters might be the ones that are right. I have yet to find a counter theory that IMHO works though. Maybe the trouble I have with the scepticism towards global warming is the conspiracy theory aspects of it and that so many humbug articles are cited as science. But of course many articles about \"global warming crisis\" in the media aren\'t much better. Source criticism isn\'t as much fun as jumping to conclusions I guess.

@EvilDave: The entire root of this problem is that we are using fossile fuels. The CO2 we create from breathing we get from the things we eat and the things we eat thus has the CO2 bounded. Like the moose eat plants, breath out which is then used by other plants through photosynthesis. The net effect is Zero. When we burn fossile fuels we realease more and more CO2 into the system

@Supervike: About the other planets heating up phenonomenon. Not all planets are warming, some are in fact cooling. There is only a handful of planetary bodies heating up.. and that is to be expected and not an anomali. And why they are heating aren\'t unexplainable either, as expected there is one different explanation for each planet. And finally afaik the solar activity haven\'t increased during the last decades either.

 

[Astonia]

Originally posted by farseerlum
making a small difference will not help.

IT WON\"T

to comabt green house gasses you need to ACTIVELY reduce them. only carbon has any hope of being reduced through tree growth. and it won\'t be nearly enough.

what is really annoying is the whole you can do your bit crowd who are busy rearranging deckchairs on the titanic. and half of them are making matter worse. recycling paper, fitting catylitic converters and using ethanol are \"green\" things to do. unless you have a clue and realise what damage these things do.

Well, I agree with you, I never ment that all we should be doing is turning off the lights, but that is still something that doesn\'t cost any affort and that anyone can do. Of course we need to put pressure on our politicians and the corporate world, but I think the best way to get people to even start changing their lifestyle is by encouraging small steps.

Preaching too much doom and gloom, I think, will only alienate people and make them not care at all.

I guess the best way is, like someone mentioned, to make it cost effective to be green. Money seem to have a pretty loud voice, unfortunately...

And, is recycling glass, plastic and aluminium bottles and cans as damaging to nature as papaer? And batteries? There\'s more to recycle than just paper, and I know in Sweden at least it works becasue you actually get money back from recycling your bottles and cans.

 

[Sand Rat]

Glass, plastic, steel, aluminum, batteries, et al are much easier on the environment when it comes to recycling.

 

[Sand Rat]

Originally posted by Avelorn
@Steelcult: It\'s not like the error was a huge blow to the science or anything. You might find this article enlighting.

@EvilDave: The entire root of this problem is that we are using fossile fuels. The CO2 we create from breathing we get from the things we eat and the things we eat thus has the CO2 bounded. Like the moose eat plants, breath out which is then used by other plants through photosynthesis. The net effect is Zero. When we burn fossile fuels we realease more and more CO2 into the system

And finally afaik the solar activity haven\'t increased during the last decades either.

Never said it did - I just pointed out that bad data gives bad results -

Actually, PETA amoung others has been using global warming caused by methane released by cattle as a pushing point about eating meat - and if I remember the article ED quoted the math worked out to 1 moose = 1 13000 Klick trip.

And we are just exiting a peak in the Solar Cycle - which could have effects on planetary temperatures as we move towards a minimum again http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/lisa3/beckmanj.html

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by Avelorn

@EvilDave: The entire root of this problem is that we are using fossile fuels. The CO2 we create from breathing we get from the things we eat and the things we eat thus has the CO2 bounded. Like the moose eat plants, breath out which is then used by other plants through photosynthesis. The net effect is Zero. When we burn fossil fuels we release more and more CO2 into the system

I call BS on this theory. If this were true, the Ice Ages never would have ended, nor would there even be Ice Ages. It would simply be a constant average.
We have counted at the very least six Ice Ages.

In Nature there is never a Zero sum, there is an extreme that gets balanced out over time by another extreme. ie: Overpopulation of a species, leads to shortage of food supply, leads to fighting, and starvation of species, killing off many or wiping the species out altogether.

Perfect Harmony in nature is a Myth.

Geologists have been saying for decades that our civilization is at the tail end of the last Ice Age, which invariably means the temperature will follow pattern and will go up, a few billion years later it will invariably go back down.

edit:
Rather, there is a Zero Sum, but only on the much larger scale, and only when you average.
So, to claim the last hundred years or so, as the global average is impossible (or foolish) to do, and means absolutely nothing since we do not know where our civilization is on the geological scale, and if it is on the tail end of the last Ice Age, we may not even be in the true global average temperatures yet, as the true average would be a narrow band between the the two extremes, Ice Age and Temperate Age, an area over billions of years.

 

[simmuskhan]

I just find it bizarre that people don\'t want to change old habits.
Never gonna get that advanced technology if we never stop using old technology.
I mean, seriously, burning stuff to generate power? It\'s so old fashioned!
Regardless of the climate issue I think we should be promoting the use of newer and cooler tech, what\'s the harm in it?

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by simmuskhan
Regardless of the climate issue I think we should be promoting the use of newer and cooler tech, what\'s the harm in it?

Didn\'t they say that when they split the atom?lol
Newer, cooler tech, often brings newer, not so cool problems.

 

[Roger Bunting]

It\'s not the cow\'s fault for the methane, it\'s the termites.

 

[Avelorn]

@Steelcult: Yeah. I find such things as the PETA suggest etc. to be funny. Some use it to promote moose-hunt as well. The methane-levels of the atmosphere has been steady for a number of years from a period of increase, but that might of course change.

I\'m convinced that climate change can be fueled by activity or inactivity of the sun. But the consensus is that this climate change isn\'t.

The solar cycle numbers and figures

As you can see the activities have remained relatively unchanged for the last decades when a substantial amount of warming have occured. There is so to speak no direct correlation to the temperature graph. However there is one interesting graph and that is the one dealing with the so called \"Cosmic rays\". I haven\'t read enough on the subject yet to have a meaningful discussion about it. Realclimate and other sites deals with this issue in several articles though that might be worth a read if anyones interested.

@Evil Dave: Ehm. The fact remains that if we release CO2 that is bound in coal or oil into the atmosphere the atmospherical concentration of CO2 will increase. Just like if the permafrost melts it will release greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. So I wasn\'t saying that CO2 levels are constant, was I? Now my \"theory\" is BS as it wasn\'t ment as a theory more an oversimplification of the carbon cycle to illustrate a point. That climate change isn\'t because the moose are breathing more heavily than before. I don\'t think methane from farting is the climate forcing factor either.

Do you think the ice age ended because of animals breathing and farting? Your reply somwhat implyes that, not sure if you ment it. Well.. that is a theory but I very much doubt it.

Climate change is inevitable.. it will happen without our meddling with the atmosphere. But that doesn\'t mean that this rapid climate change is not linked to our emission of greenhouse gasses.

 

[Sand Rat]

Originally posted by Avelorn
Climate change is inevitable.. it will happen without our meddling with the atmosphere. But that doesn\'t mean that this rapid climate change is not linked to our emission of greenhouse gasses.

But, by the same token, it doesn\'t mean that it is linked either.

 

[Talion]

Originally posted by steelcult

Originally posted by Avelorn
Climate change is inevitable.. it will happen without our meddling with the atmosphere. But that doesn\'t mean that this rapid climate change is not linked to our emission of greenhouse gasses.

But, by the same token, it doesn\'t mean that it is linked either.

I find this argument a bit strange so you\'re saying that cause you can\'t be gauranteed that you make a difference then just don\'t bother.

No one is saying that we are the only factor but part of it, and that means anything we can do to little our effect should be done.

Lets not bother giving money to charity cause no one can guarantee me it makes a difference.